


To love another man—is to leave no one behind

by howevernot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Oral Sex, Set between Season 2 and 3, Sexual Tension, Suicidal Thoughts, Unbeta'd, Unresolved Emotional Tension, implied/referenced suicidal ideation, mentioned Miranda Barlow, there's a lot of tension of all kinds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24890734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot
Summary: Silver wants. For once he knows that he wants, understands his own desires. He wants Flint to live, he wants the closeness of the weeks of his recovery, of a few moments past, to return and take root. More than anything he wants Flint to let him return the care, without suspicion or coldness.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 8
Kudos: 71





	To love another man—is to leave no one behind

**Author's Note:**

> The title is lifted directly from Ocean Vuong's poem into the breach, which is gorgeous and everyone should go read it. The entire quote reads:  
> "To love another  
> man—is to leave
> 
> no one behind
> 
> to forgive me.
> 
> I want to leave  
> no one behind."

Often, upon coming back from a land raid, Flint will sequester himself in his cabin, speaking as few words as possible on deck and leaving immediately. Silver relies almost entirely on Billy to tell him what happened on shore. Silver doesn't envy the vanguard; he's never liked combat, never been particularly good at it, always preferring to rely on quick words and a winning smile.

The only time he is anything close to envious is when the men speak of Flint. Many are in awe of his brute determination and lack of fear in the face of an opponent, and Silver knows, he knows that Flint in action is a beautiful thing to behold. 

But it's more than that. The men aren't stupid. They might not be as close to Flint as Silver or as observant as Billy but there are times when the tone turns from awed to concerned. When his boldness becomes recklessness and the men know it.

Tonight, Flint speaks barely two words to him upon his arrival and Billy is almost equally taciturn, telling Silver only that the local magistrate and his entire family was killed, and giving him a sense of their losses and gains: two men dead, several more injured, and a decent haul of goods. He says nothing of Flint or of the tension running through the returning men. 

Silver lets him go so Billy can oversee the placement of barrels in the hold. Silver goes bellow with him to summon Howell, who's been dealing day and night with Richards who has a festering wound in his shoulder from the last attack. Howell has been giving him laudanum for the past few days and, though he has not said it, Silver knows Richards is close to death. He can only hope that their newly injured fair better.

The sickbay is humid and Howell is sitting beside Richard, who is sweating and sallow. 

“They’ve returned,” he tells Howell. The doctor scowls and grabs a few supplies to carry with him to the deck. They have to go on deck as the men will try to avoid the doctor, with his foul-smelling poultices, the tinctures he always guards so carefully, and his blades, which have yet to be used for something so dramatic as Silver’s own amputation. Silver understands their reticence.

Luckily there are no injuries so dramatic as a gunshot this time. There are some cuts, Joji got his leg twisted in something in the dark and is walking with a limp. It’s not something that needs Silver’s oversight so he’s happy to give the grumbling men over to Howells to corral into the sickbay. The injuries cannot be the source of Flint’s strange mood then he decides, watching the men shuffle off. He may be grieved by the deaths of two crew members, though Silver doubts it. They’ve lost more men than two in a raid and Flint has come back in a better mood.

Instead of worrying about the injured, Silver sets himself up against the rail out of the way of any bustle, to listen to a knot of men retelling the events of the raid to everyone who stayed behind. He does envy this. He prefers getting his information from the source, not second and third and fourth hand.

Tonight, there’s heroic renditions of how Joji fell and, while kneeling on the ground, cut down a militia man. There’s a lurid description of Billy gutting someone which Billy doesn’t try to counter. Silver tucks the stories away for later use, but really, he’s looking for something about Flint, something to explain his resolute silence upon returning to the ship. It’s Muldoon, who’s standing next to De Groot, both with their arms crossed looking for all the world like disapproving parents looking down upon their unruly children from the forecastle, who finally sheds some light on the situation. 

“He’s fucking lucky is what he is,” De Groot says with a scowl.

“You know someone isn’t lucky like that. You don’t just keep getting lucky over and over. He has the favor of something,” Muldoon is struggling to explain.

“There’s no witch or magic. Don’t be a fool. I once served under a captain who lived through every battle until he was 57, and then fell off the ship one night and drowned because he had too much to drink. It doesn’t fucking mean anything,” De Groot argues.

“Flint stood in front of the gun, didn’t even duck! And it went off! If that’s not providence, then what?” Muldoon says fervently. He’s not the only one who believes Flint to be so protected, though where he draws his power from has now become topic of debate now that Mrs. Barlow is dead.

The story sends a shiver through Silver. He knows Flint to be destructive but the increasing destructiveness, self-directed, has become of increasing concern in the last few weeks. Certainly, he was worried in those first weeks in Flint’s cabin. He had registered Flint’s slow spiral, when he wasn’t floating on whatever tincture Howells had given him that day or wrung out from his own recovery or clenched with fresh pain. He’d watched Flint when he could, who by turns had been tender and wretched. He had helped Silver to the pot, helped him bathe and clean the wound, and read to him. On the other hand, he had drunken himself stupid more than once late in the night and Silver had woken more than once to Flint crying in the dark. He hadn’t been awake for Flint cutting his hair but he’d been conscious to see Flint’s vicious little bouts of rage that possessed him now. Much as Flint was tender to Silver, there were times when rage boiled over and he was rough with Silver, in tone or touch. More than once Flint had woken Silver by throwing something across the room or yelling at some offending crew member.

He'd spent a lot of his recovery watching Flint. So intensely, in fact, that he often found himself of mirror of Flint’s moods. It was pleasurable as it was frightening. Feeling with Flint let him escape his own dark moods. Sometimes, Flint was the only way Silver could feel anything at all, so numbed by drug and shock was he. It felt good to understand someone else so deeply but it frightened him. 

Silver let the men have a few moments of storytelling and excitement after the battle before he De Groot and Billy, who had returned from bellow, began issuing orders to get them underway, least the town they just put to flame manage to call up more militia men.

After they are underway, Silver went to the captain’s cabin, where he found Billy, discussing the haul with Flint. The ledger is open in front of them on the desk. Since Dufresne’s departure they don’t have an official accountant anymore, so Flint, Billy, and Silver do the accounting between the three of them. It’s not the best solution and leads to tension between Billy and Flint that Silver inevitably needs to sooth. 

They fall silent when Silver enters the room. 

“Was that all Billy?” Flint asks, tone cool.

Billy’s jaw clenches and he draws himself up to his full height. Silver has been studying the two of them to try and understand how even though Billy is taller and stronger, Flint still cuts the more intimidating figure. There’s something in the ease with which Flint wields his body, poised and often sprawling, but perpetually alert that makes him look like a coiled predator. By comparison, Billy is tense, and often looks a little lost, he moves efficiently with no thought how he appears to others.

“That was all,” Billy replies shortly and brushes past Silver on the way out.

“Mr. Silver, what can I do for you?” Flint looks unruffled. The telltale flush of battle is gone. He’s still smeared in gore and grime and when Silver moves towards him to lean on the desk for support he can smell gunpowder, ash, and sweat clinging to Flint.

“The men still think you are protected by some kind of divine providence.”

Flint huffs and looks away. Silver wants to ask him about Muldoon’s story, wants to know if he just didn’t notice the gun, if it was too dark or if he was too slow or if Flint just stood in front of that gun and hoped to die.

“Nothing protects me, Mr. Silver, but my own hand,” he says and Silver suspects Flint must take some great pleasure from the feel of Silver’s name on his tongue to say it so often.

“Are you hurt?” Silver asks, trying a different angle.

Flint just looks at him for a long moment and Silver refuses to quail under his piercing eyes; it’s a study in stillness. When he first met Flint, he often struggled to look the other man in eye. The knowledge of his own betrayal made it hard to hold the other man’s eye for too long but he’s made an art of it as of late. Even before Charles Town, perhaps somewhere around the time that Flint killed Gates, Silver found himself unable to look away, in spite of his better judgement. 

“No, I am unhurt,” Flint answers eventually. 

Flint stands with his hands pressed to the desk. Silver watches those hands, remembering vividly the ways those hands took care of him. He overlays those images with imaginations of what Flint’s hands must have done tonight, cutting through a whole town of strangers. He doesn’t know how to reconcile this about Flint. He knows the pattern of freckles and scars across Flint’s knuckles the shape of his fingers against Silver’s hand, neck, and thigh. He knows their warmth, and he knows them smeared in blood and shaking from beating a man to death. When Flint moves to stand before Silver, looking down at him, Silver does not budge. The look isn’t outright contemptuous and Silver is still thinking of his gentleness. In fact, this close all Silver really registers is how tired the other man looks, how barren and worn he is without his hair.

“I will ask again, what do you need?”

“The men said you were almost shot,” Silver finally says. He’s not sure why he’s trying to check on Flint. For all the strange intimacy they’ve shared just short weeks ago, living together in the same small space together, that intimacy is over now. Flint might have helped him piss, and steadied him on his crutches, and propped him up that first time he tried to put on the peg and almost collapsed from pain, but after Silver moved back into crew’s quarters, Flint had shuttered. Not quite hateful, but certainly not close and familiar as he had been.

Flint tilts his head in acknowledgement. “I’ve been almost shot before. I’ve been shot before.”

That’s not particularly comforting, nor illuminating. Silver doesn’t really know what he’s looking for right now; Flint is unlikely to offer any kind of comfort or reassurance.

He wants to ask Flint what they would do if he died, where they would go, who they would be. Where else would you go and matter, Flint said to him and Silver knows the men love him, that if Flint died, he would still have place with these men on this ship, but still he feels a desperate need to keep this man alive.

“You know, I once knew a boy, Simund Bird, who tried to kill his sister when he was 17,” Flint takes a little step back at that, searching Silver’s face, “A few weeks before that we’d stolen food from an inn together and had a feast with his sister,” and my brother, Silver doesn’t tack on, “He beat her in the street. A couple other had to pull him off her. She ran away a few days later. I stayed friends with him, until one day I saw him pin another boy to the wall, and beat him unconscious. Do you know what I did?”

“Ran?” Flint asks, his brows knitted.

“I bandaged his knuckles and slept in the room we shared. A couple months later they found him in the canal,” he lets the phrase hang in the air, “Suicide.” 

“I think he was waiting for someone to kill him, and when no one would he did it himself.”

“Are you suggesting I’m hoping someone will kill me?” Flint asks, expression flat.

“Aren’t you?” Silver challenges.

Flint’s posture goes lose, he sighs, and Silver finally sees how completely exhausted the other man is. The hands that he admired earlier are trembling at his side. He feels a spark of pain in his solar plexus at that. Silver finds he wants to lower Flint to his hammock, pull and blanket over him and tell him to go to sleep. This is what Flint had done for him, multiple times, during his own convalesce and god, Silver wants to return the care.

“You need not worry for me, Silver,” Flint finally breathes moving away from Silver. 

Silver grabs his wrist, pulling Flint towards him, needing desperately to keep Flint close. He’s suddenly certain this moment will be over if he allows Flint to walk away from him; he is certain they are teetering on the edge of something here.

He wants to tell Flint that way lies destruction, whatever way he is going; he wants to tell Flint that he still misses Simund Bird terribly, even as he was completely terrified of the other boy; he wants tell Flint that he will weather Flint’s rage, his exhaustion, his grief because this is the only place Silver matters anymore and he’s committed to these men, to Flint, in blood. He doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he swipes his thumb against the inside of Flint’s wrist and watches Flint inhale sharply. He does it again. He reaches for Flint’s cheek, which still has a spray of dried blood on it, running up along the side of his face and into his hair. 

He's just beginning to become worried about his next move when Flint reaches up to put a hand on his shoulder. He squeezes against Silver’s collarbone. Silver is sure –

“Your concern is unnecessary,” Flint tells him firmly. He steps away and Silver wants to snatch him back and do what? He’s not sure. He lets Flint walk away, back to the desk, where he sits down again and whatever they were acting out between them is over. This is his dismissal he knows. This is where Flint feels alien to him. Much as he mirrors Flint, feels deeply what the other man feels, there are moments of dissonance, where Flint is closed off. Like a locked door stands between them and Silver has no idea where the key might be, nor what stands on the other side.

Silver makes a noise of frustration and goes over to grab Flint’s face and kiss him. Flint recoils, breaking off their kiss, and stares at Silver. His face is twitching in a way Silver can’t quite parse. When it becomes clear Flint isn’t going to react, he leans in and kisses the man again. This time Flint kisses him back, opening his mouth to Silver’s persistence.

Silver thinks he’s lost track of what he was trying to do. He was trying to make sure the captain didn’t kill himself and now he’s kissing Flint. Flint will probably kick him out in a rage in a few more minutes but at the moment he doesn’t particularly care.

The next time they break apart Flint stands and presses Silver back until he’s sitting on the edge of the desk, which Silver has to admit is more comfortable than leaning over Flint had been.

Silver grasps Flint’s face, curling his fingers at the nape of Flint’s neck, enjoying the play of tense muscles under his fingers. Flint’s hands are trembling against his waist and Silver wants to pull him close until he stops shuddering, stops holding himself so tightly.

Flint didn’t make a sound under his ministrations other than to sigh against Silver’s lips when they break apart, so Silver decides to apply himself more forcefully, holding Flint’s face in place and kissing him fiercely. He wants a reaction, something other than stubborn silence.

Flint kisses him back leveraging his height and position over Silver to press him into the desk. He holds Silver’s face and slows the kiss until it’s unbearably slow and Silver’s making quiet noises as Flint licks into his mouth. As fucking usual, Flint has ruined his plans.

“Is this what you came for, Mr. Silver?” 

Christ, he’s had his tongue in Silver’s mouth and he’s still calling Silver ‘Mr. Silver.’

He's not sure how to answer, in all honesty he’d not thought of this outcome at all. 

“What do you mean?” He cringes at his own obviousness. Flint will call him on the weak answer he is sure of it.

Instead, Flint huffs and asks, “What do you want?” in a surprisingly soft voice. His shoulders are already a fraction less stiff than they were a moment ago.

What did Silver want? He has no idea. He never has any idea until something is already happening and he finds it either favorable or intolerable. By the time he knows if he wants to be involved in the proceedings, it’s usually too late to back out. 

His silence must go on too long because Flint begins to shift away and for yet another time that night; Silver reaches for him and draws him close. He still cannot bring himself to answer so he presses their mouths together. Flint returns his passion fervently, hands gripping his face, his hip, his waist, his hair. Flint dips his head to kiss and bite along Silver’s neck, drawing a needy sound from Silver. 

Silver presses their hips together and moans softly at the feel of Flint’s hardness against him. The shift in position leaves him precarious, gripping the edge of the desk with one hand and planting his foot firmly against the floor while keeping his thighs spread to accommodate Flint’s hips. If he tries to put weight on his peg, it slips against the floor but he doesn’t feel unbalanced. Between Flint’s grip on him and the solidity of his body against Silver’s he’s certain he can manage to stay up.

The next time Flint pulls away Silver lets him. For a moment they just gaze at each other, Flint’s brows drawn together and Silver wonders what he’s looking for. Silver twitches his hips against Flint and the other man’s eyes go dark with desire. The look sends a bolt of heat through Silver, and he knows his cheeks must be bright with desire. His lips tingle from Flint’s attentions and he feels eager and bright under Flint’s hands. He relishes feeling, which has become distant since he lost his leg.

Flint kisses him again and then goes to his knees without comment. Silver sucks in a sharp breath at the sight. He feels suddenly overwhelmed. He came here wanting to check on Flint, wanting to care for Flint, and here Flint is on his knees. He’s not even sure he wants this from Flint besides. The man is volatile, he’s just lost Mrs. Barlow, the two of them barely trust each other most days and are openly hostile others.

In the end, it is the terribly tender way Flint kisses Silver’s belly through his shirt that settles his nerves, the way his hands, which are still trembling very faintly, run along his thighs, the way he looks up at Silver for permission to push his shirt up. Silver pulls the shirt off for him and Flint kisses along his stomach and hips, lavishing attention to the crest of his pelvis.

It is Silver who pushes Flint away and gets his trousers unfastened. He needs Flint’s mouth on him now. The other man grins up at him when he gets his cock out. Instead of putting his mouth where Silver wants him to, Flint kisses the sensitive place where his thigh meets his hip. Silver makes a sound, feeling just on the verge of uncomfortable at the prickle of Flint’s beard against his skin and Flint answers with a low noise and takes his cock in hand. Silver bites back a gasp and thrusts up into Flint’s grip, eager to get it on with. Flint hums soothingly at him and still doesn’t put his mouth on Silver, instead kissing along the exposed part of his thighs. 

“Will you be ok like this?” Flint asks in low tone, hand on Silver’s knee. He knows Flint is asking if he’ll be able to stand, if he needs more support; the question is a tender kind of agony. Silver loathes that he needs to ask, loathes that Flint has to acknowledge his leg, here in this moment. But he knows the question is born from a steady care, from watching Silver fall so many times and helping him stand again when he’s crumpled on the ground. 

“I’ll be fine,” he says shortly. He’s not sure if that’s true but he wants it to be. He wants Flint’s mouth on him more than he wants to consider his fucking leg and all the limitations it imposes on him these days.

“Here,” Flint says quietly and tugs Silvers trousers down, helping him step out of them. When Silver is bare, feeling exposed and strange in the captain’s cabin, Flint lifts Silver’s bad leg onto his shoulder. To have the pressure off is a relief, even if it means he has to balance himself with a hand on the desk to make up for lost stability. But then Flint pumps his cock slowly and kisses the tip and Silver doesn’t really care anymore that his peg is heavy and probably laying uncomfortably against Flint’s back. He just needs Flint.

And Flint it seems needs him. He’s given up teasing and licks a long stripe along the underside of Silver cock. Silver tries to thrust up into Flint’s mouth but Flint moves to mouth along his cock. Then for a moment, he pulls back and looks at Silver’s cock. He’s not sure if Flint could be coy with Silver’s cock in front of his face and he doesn’t exactly want to find out. He needn’t worry though since the next moment Flint groans at takes Silver into his mouth. Silver makes an undignified noise and brings his free hand to his mouth to quiet himself. But then Flint starts swirling his tongue, taking Silver deeper into his mouth and Silver finds he needs to grasp for the man’s hair instead. He ends up gripping the back of Flint’s head, cursing the man’s lack of hair.

Flint hums when Silver trusts up this time. Silver has seen women get their mouths fucked roughly, in fact, he’s offered his mouth up for the same treatment more than once. He doesn’t dare do so here. He lets Flint set the pace, taking him deeper and deeper, only draw off and lavish attention on the head, flicking his tongue over the slit and then swallowing him down again. His hand pumps the part of his cock that Flint’s mouth cannot reach. Flint’s expression is blissful in the dark light of the cabin. His sheared hair glows in the gold lamplight and John luxuriates in the feel of his mouth hot and slick around his cock. Flint’s mouth is rapturous and Silver is almost overcome under his attentions. All of the gentleness and pleasure of Flint’s touch that was distant and unattainable during Silver’s convalescence now concentrated in this act. And it is beautiful, Flint is beautiful, on his knees mouth full of Silver, one hand holding Silver’s bad leg stroking along his hip, fingers grazing Silver’s back.

When Silver is close, he tries to push against Flint’s shoulder to make him let go of his cock. He gasps out a warning but Flint just presses close and sucks harder making Silver cry out. When he comes it is with Flint’s name on his lips and Flint swallows him down.

Flint rests his head against Silver’s good thigh in the aftermath, letting his peg thud to the floor. They stay like that for a moment as Silver shudders through the aftershocks. His cooling sweat makes him shiver and he reaches for his shirt, managing to slip it on without disturbing Flint. 

Flint breathes against his hip for a moment before standing. His lips are red and swollen and Silver wants to kiss him badly, wants to taste himself on Flint’s lips. Instead, Flint hands Silver his trousers. Silver was hoping to reciprocate, if not with his mouth then with his hand but Flint steps away and Silver lets him. He struggles through tugging on his trousers, still using the desk for balance, now aware of the edge biting into his ass and how numb his good leg has become. 

After the trousers are on and his leg feels steady again, he walks over to where Flint is sat on his cot. He grasps Flint’s face again and kisses him. Silver is not about to ask to return the favor, is not about to take initiative without Flint’s direction. The idea of initiating on his own, especially when Flint stepped away so completely, is frightening. But Silver will take this: the taste of himself on Flint’s tongue, his lips, made more plush from working Silver over, his quiet sigh as he leans into Silver’s touch.

“I — ” Silver starts.

“That will be all, Mr. Silver.”

The dismissal stings fiercely. Silver wants. For once he knows that he wants, understands his own desires. He wants Flint to live, he wants the closeness of the weeks of his recovery, of a few moments past, to return and take root. More than anything he wants Flint to let him return the care, without suspicion or coldness.

“You know, some day you will need to learn that you are not standing before some gallows as we all wait in glee. Mrs. Barlow has not left you alone in the world, Flint.”

Flint looks up at him, and he looks small and tired and sad. All of the alluring beauty of a few moments ago transformed under the weight of his cold grief. 

“Silver, get out.” He doesn’t sound commanding. His voice is soft and he’s not looking at Silver. His hands are shaking again.

Silver leaves, with nothing else to say.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos mean the world to me.
> 
> [Come say hi to me on tumblr if you want!](https://howevernot.tumblr.com/)


End file.
